Senior leadership at Australia’s national public broadcaster the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has defended a new artificial intelligence trial that converts on-air radio news bulletins into text-based online content, pushing back against concerns that the project could lead to widespread job cuts and erode local journalism standards.
ABC Managing Director Hugh Marks outlined details of the pilot program during testimony before a Senate estimates hearing on Thursday, noting the trial has already been rolled out in the Gippsland region of western Victoria. The core goal of the initiative, Marks explained, is to extend the shelf life of local radio news by making it accessible to digital audiences, rather than limiting it to a single live broadcast. He added that the public broadcaster is also developing a feature to customize digital content based on individual users’ preferences for localized local news, a key competitive advantage only the ABC can deliver for Australian communities.
Extensive consultations with local ABC teams across multiple regional operations preceded the launch of the pilot, Marks confirmed, framing the project as a major step forward in strengthening the broadcaster’s connection with local audiences, a core mission that no other media organization in Australia can fulfill at the same scale.
The trial faced questions from Senator Peter Whish-Wilson, who asked whether the AI project was just the first phase of a broader push to automate newsroom operations and whether the tool would be used to justify cutting journalist roles. In response, Marks clarified that while the adoption of AI may lead to shifts in job functions over time, the program was never designed to replace existing positions. “This is about making the most of the jobs that exist,” he told the committee, emphasizing that the tool is built to complement rather than replace the work of ABC journalists.
Marks added that the ABC already uses artificial intelligence to support emergency broadcasting operations, and this news repurposing trial is just one more way the broadcaster is leveraging technology to improve its services. Once radio content is converted to written text, it can also be shared with other local media outlets, boosting the depth and quality of regional news coverage across the country, he noted.
Crucially, Marks stressed that all AI-generated content will still undergo full human editorial review before publication, and the pilot remains staff-led, with no plans to replace the work of entry-level or junior reporters. “We’re really largely responding to things that staff are doing,” he said. “We’re early in the adoption, and it will be interesting to see how it plays out.”
ABC Editorial Director Gavin Fang echoed Marks’ comments, noting that the public broadcaster has already begun integrating AI into specific newsroom workflows, most notably for processing and analyzing large datasets that would be impractical for human journalists to work through manually. Fang emphasized that AI remains a support tool rather than an independent creator: “Overall, what we’re seeing is that it’s still relying on the journalists to be able to know what the story is and to know where to point the AI.”